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A portable DVD player is a mobile, battery powered DVD player in the format of a mobile device. Many recent players play files from USB flash drives and SD cards. [1]
The first portable DVD player was introduced in 1998 by Panasonic. [2] They are made to be practical for "on the go" use. Many are able to perform secondary functions such as playing music from audio CDs and displaying images from digital cameras or camcorders.
The popularity of low-cost battery powered portable DVD players in North Korea allows families to watch Chinese and South Korean programs on SD cards and USB flash drives. [1] [3] North Korean defectors run activist groups, such as Fighters for a Free North Korea [4] that smuggle DVDs and SD cards into the country "to introduce North Koreans to the rest of the world". [3] Activist groups planned to distribute DVD copies of The Interview via balloon drops. [5] [6] The balloon drop was postponed after the North Korean government referred to the plan as a de facto "declaration of war." [7]
Most PDPs use TFT LCD screens, some using LED backlighting. The most common PDP screen size is 7 inches (18 cm), although some are as large as 10 to 12 inches (25 to 30 cm) - the larger size competing with Tablet computers. The battery weight and need for portability presented problems - including problems with mechanical shocks interrupting the reading of the DVD [8] . Some have articulating screens that rotate 180 degrees & fold flat. Portable DVD players generally have connections for additional screens and a car lighter plug.
Some PDPs had iPod docks, USB and SD Card slots built in. Some can play videos in other formats such as MP4, DivX, either from CDs, flash memory cards or USB external hard disks, and some DVD players had a USB video recorder.
Additional features found on PDPs include:
Prices of portable DVD players vary, usually retailing for about US$40–300. When first released, portable DVD players would retail at over $1,000 and were only manufactured in Japan. Price drops in 2015 have led to some devices being retailed for as little as $40. [1]
A DVD player is a device that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to watch the DVD content, which could be a movie, a recorded TV show, or other content.
A memory card is an electronic data storage device used for storing digital information, typically using flash memory. These are commonly used in digital portable electronic devices, such as Digital cameras as well as in many early games consoles such as the Nintendo Wii. They allow adding memory to such devices using a card in a socket instead of protruding USB flash drives.
Secure Digital, officially abbreviated as SD, is a proprietary, non-volatile, flash memory card format the SD Association (SDA) developed for use in portable devices.
A camcorder is a self-contained portable electronic device with video and recording as its primary function. It is typically equipped with an articulating screen mounted on the left side, a belt to facilitate holding on the right side, hot-swappable battery facing towards the user, hot-swappable recording media, and an internally contained quiet optical zoom lens.
A flash drive is a data storage device that includes flash memory with an integrated USB interface. A typical USB drive is removable, rewritable, and smaller than an optical disc, and usually weighs less than 30 g (1 oz). Since first offered for sale in late 2000, the storage capacities of USB drives range from 8 megabytes to 256 gigabytes (GB), 512 GB and 1 terabyte (TB). As of 2023, 2 TB flash drives were the largest currently in production. Some allow up to 100,000 write/erase cycles, depending on the exact type of memory chip used, and are thought to physically last between 10 and 100 years under normal circumstances.
A format war is a competition between similar but mutually incompatible technical standards that compete for the same market, such as for data storage devices and recording formats for electronic media. It is often characterized by political and financial influence on content publishers by the developers of the technologies. Developing companies may be characterized as engaging in a format war if they actively oppose or avoid interoperable open-industry technical standards in favor of their own.
iRiver, stylized IRIVER and formerly as iriver, is a South Korean consumer electronics division owned by Dreamus which markets music and other accessories in its domestic market.
ZEN is a series of portable media players designed and manufactured by Creative Technology Limited from 2004 to 2011. The players evolved from the NOMAD brand through the NOMAD Jukebox series of music players, with the first separate "ZEN" branded models released in 2004. The last Creative Zen player, X-Fi3, was released at the end of 2011.
A portable media player (PMP) or digital audio player (DAP) is a portable consumer electronics device capable of storing and playing digital media such as audio, images, and video files. The data is typically stored on a compact disc (CD), Digital Versatile Disc (DVD), Blu-ray Disc (BD), flash memory, microdrive, SD cards or hard drive; most earlier PMPs used physical media, but modern players mostly use flash memory. In contrast, analogue portable audio players play music from non-digital media that use analogue media, such as cassette tapes or vinyl records.
Mini CDs, or pocket CDs, are CDs with a smaller diameter and one-third the storage capacity of a standard 120 mm disc.
Lyra is a series of MP3 and portable media players (PMP). Initially it was developed and sold by Indianapolis-based Thomson Consumer Electronics Inc., a part of Thomson Multimedia, from 1999 under its RCA brand in the United States and under the Thomson brand in Europe. There were also RCA/Thomson PMPs without the Lyra name, such as the RCA Kazoo (RD1000), RCA Opal and RCA Perl. In January 2008, Thomson sold its Consumer Electronics part including the RCA brand and Lyra line to AudioVox. RCA-branded PMPs are still being made today in its domestic market but no longer under the Lyra name. The Lyra was an early pioneer in digital audio players, although in later years most of its output were OEM products.
The GP2X is a Linux-based handheld video game console and portable media player developed by South Korean company GamePark Holdings. It was released on November 10, 2005, in South Korea only.
Yepp was Samsung Electronics' digital audio player brand until Samsung decided to retire most of their family brands in February 2011. From then on, their MP3 players were simply branded "Samsung" worldwide until they discontinued all of them in late 2013. The brand included a wide range of hard-drive based as well as flash-memory based players. The name is claimed to be an acronym for "young, energetic, passionate person".
The Gigabeat was a line of digital media players by Toshiba.
AVCHD is a file-based format for the digital recording and playback of high-definition video. It is H.264 and Dolby AC-3 packaged into the MPEG transport stream, with a set of constraints designed around the camcorders.
A handheld television is a portable device for watching television that usually uses a TFT LCD or OLED and CRT color display. Many of these devices resemble handheld transistor radios.
The Sansa e200 series is a portable media player developed by SanDisk and released on January 5, 2006. The device is available in four capacities of Flash memory: 2 GB (e250), 4 GB (e260), 6 GB (e270), and 8 GB (e280). All players have a 1.8-inch, TFT LCD display with a resolution of 176 by 220 pixels. Certain files, if not in a format accepted by the player's original firmware, must first be converted with the Sansa Media Converter Windows software. This will convert images to bitmap format (.bmp) and videos to MJPEG, for v1 models. On v2 players it will convert videos to DivX and simply resize images. It is not possible to simply copy videos to the device, even if they seem to be in the correct format; trying to access them displays an error message.
A dongle is a small piece of computer hardware that connects to a port on another device to provide it with additional functionality, or enable a pass-through to such a device that adds functionality.
Fighters for a Free North Korea is an organization formed in South Korea that is known for periodically launching balloons carrying human rights and pro-democracy literature, DVDs, transistor radios and USB flash drives from South Korea into North Korea. Over two million such balloons have been launched. The balloons, which generally reach their destination area after three to four hours in the air, are timed to release their materials in the Pyongyang area.
Notel (Korean: 노텔), also called NoteTel, is a brand of portable media player made in China which is popular in North Korea. The word is a portmanteau of "notebook" and "television". It is estimated that up to half of all urban North Korean households have a notel.